God and Caesar: American Churches and War Taxes

In 1982, Ronald Freund’s book
What One Person Can Do To Help Prevent Nuclear War
was published by Twenty-Third Publications, a Catholic-oriented publisher.
Chapter three was titled “God and Caesar” and concerned taxes as one point of
leverage individuals have.

Freund gives a brief overview of the history of conscientious tax resistance
that seems to me to understate it, though it’s possible that in
1982 less evidence was easily available.

[I]t was not until the Vietnam War that tax resistance became a significant
form of Christian witness against war. One of the early Vietnam-era tax
resisters was William Faw, a minister of the Church of the Brethren, one of
the historic peace churches.

Faw had not come to my attention before, but Freund tells his story as follows:

William Faw: “Here I Stand; I Cannot Do Other”

William Faw was born in 1941 in Nigeria where his
parents were missionaries for the Brethren Church. His father took a post
teaching at Bethany Seminary, and the family moved to Chicago where Bill grew
up. He went to college in Indiana and then attended the seminary until his
graduation in 1964.

While at school Faw was compelled to confront the issue of the draft. “Both my
parents were pacifists so I had decided early on that I would either be a
resister or a conscientious objector; I could not accept a student or
ministerial deferment in good conscience,” explains Faw. Despite his religious
background it still required a two-year battle with the draft board to obtain
his CO
status. By the time he received
CO status
he had a family and was never required to perform alternative service.

He received his first assignment in 1964 at the
Douglas Park Church of the Brethren, a poor, multiracial community on the West
Side of Chicago. It was during this period that Bill Faw became a tax
resister. Faw explains that decision, saying, “I was a self-employed pastor
and my wife was not working so we had control over our tax payments. Since my
wife was also a pacifist, we felt that it was necessary to protest the Vietnam
War. The question was, ‘How can we do this together?’ We spoke with several
other Brethren who had been refusing taxes and listened to political leaders
who opposed the war. By early 1967 we decided to
refuse to pay our taxes in full knowledge that it could lead to criminal
punishment.”

When the time came to file their 1966 income tax
return, the Faws sent the
IRS a
long letter explaining why there was no check enclosed. Other resisters had
engaged in resistance by refusing even to file a return, but Faw believed that
a religious witness should be made in an open and public manner. The Faws’
letter made clear the personal struggle which accompanied their decision:

We refuse to willingly contribute to a “war machine” which is
engaged in the very brutal war in Vietnam… In the past we felt that the
ambiguities of tax paying outweighed the war-tax issue. That is, our
government’s expenditures for foreign aid, law enforcement, programs in
health, education, and welfare, agriculture, urban redevelopment, and poverty
fighting are worthy of support… Events have occurred which lead us to
reconsider our responsibilities as citizens. We feel we can be true to our
national citizenship only if we oppose a so-called “non-war” that has not
been constitutionally declared. We feel that we can be true to our
international citizenship as spelled out at the Nuremberg Trials only if we
disassociate ourselves from and actively protest our unjust, illegal, morally
deplorable, aggressive offensive against human beings in Vietnam.

But most basically we feel that we can be true to our Christian discipleship
only if we oppose… the seizure of God’s prerogative by the United States in
attempting to become the philosophical, theological, executive, legislative,
judicial, and policing agency for the entire world; only if we oppose the
exploiting of American “racism” by
A-bombing, napalming,
scatterbombing Asians; only if we oppose the mode of “evangelistic effort”
our nation is making in Vietnam to show the Buddhists what being a
“Christian” nation means…

Thus we are led to withhold our income tax and to seek constructive
alternative ways of sharing our income… In God’s name, and under his
judgment, we pray that we might choose the best path to make our witness.

…As a result, they chose to donate the tax money to the Canadian Friends
Service Committee for the relief of war victims. They were well aware that
some of those victims who would be helped by their money were North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong; they believed this action to be consistent with Jesus’ command
to “love your enemy.”

The Faws refused to pay their income taxes for the next five years, donating
the funds to various international relief agencies. The Internal Revenue
Service sent an agent to attempt to obtain the taxes directly. When this
failed the
IRS
placed a levy on the Faws’ bank account and was able to collect the back
taxes. The Faws were not threatened with criminal penalties.

Freund says the Faws were also resisting their phone tax, but returned to being
taxpayers in the wake of the 1973 Paris Peace
Accords. However, as of the writing of the book, they were planning to become
resisters again by refusing a percentage of their income tax:

The continuing military buildup, especially nuclear weapons, has led us to
resume tax resistance… We are being lulled into accepting more and more.
Johnson tried to give us guns and butter, but Reagan’s policy of
sacrificing butter for guns represents a barbaric reversal of priorities.

Freund asked about the practical effectiveness of individual tax resistance.

…Faw conceded that it would be far more powerful if institutions were to
openly advocate and practice tax resistance. “If one church did it, even a
small one like the Brethren, the Mennonites, or the Quakers, it would have a
tremendous impact on some of the liberal mainline denominations,” Faw
believes. However, even the New Call To Peacemaking, a grassroots movement
within the historic peace churches begun in 1976,
of which Faw was the local chairman for two years, has failed to adopt a
position of total resistance to war taxes. This has been a source of
frustration for Bill Faw, but he nevertheless believes in the importance of
individual witness, “I would still do it even if no one else did. There comes
a point, with Vietnam or the arms race, where you say, ‘I’m not going to
participate in that, no matter what the cost.’ It’s kind of like Martin Luther
saying, ‘Here I stand; I cannot do other.’”

Freund then briefly described “A Simple Methodology” for Christians who were
considering war tax resistance, covering the options of 1) paying taxes under
protest, 2) voluntary poverty, 3) refusal to pay. He then tried to discern what
sort of guidance might be found in the Bible, considering the difficult “Render
unto Caesar” and “the powers that be are ordained of God” sections in
particular.

Then he returns to the problem of the lack of institutional support for war tax
resistance among Christian churches:

War Taxes: Where the Churches Are

Bill Faw and tax attorney William Durland express frustration that the
churches, as national institutions, have not taken clear positions in support
of tax resistance. Durland, who counsels tax resisters, says, “Some church
body will have to declare that it stands by the Gospel and not by the
IRS.
This could have a chain reaction effect and lead to a coalition of churches to
make it work.”

What holds them back? According to Faw, many Brethren have expressed “concern
for the biblical ambiguities regarding taxes, concern over the maintenance of
a certain respectability, and fear of the consequences.” Durland is somewhat
more cynical, “The Pope speaks out against war and then honors the Italian
Army.”

What is the position of the churches? The historic peace churches,
representing 400,000 members in the United States, have been discussing the
issue since 1968. In
1973, the Church of the Brethren recommended
that, “Although the Brethren cannot agree as to whether tax withholding is
proper, they can all recognize the propriety of using the means of dissent
which the social order itself recognizes… We recommend that all who feel
concern be encouraged to express their protests through letters accompanying
their tax returns, whether accompanied by payment or not.” Many employees of
these churches have not been satisfied with this position and have urged
church agencies to refuse to withhold their federal taxes, a violation of the
law. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC),
responded by challenging the constitutionality of withholding as an
infringement on the right of religious expression. In 1974 the Supreme Court ruled in AFSCv.U.S.
that a lower court ruling in favor of the AFSC
was invalid and ordered AFSC
to continue to withhold. The AFSC
has complied with that order since. Pressure from employees of the Mennonite
Church to refuse to withhold led to the following resolution adopted in
1979, “We request the General Board to engage in
a serious and vigorous search to pursue all legal, legislative, and
administrative avenues for achieving a conscientious objector exemption from
the legal requirement that the conference withhold income taxes from its
employees.”

The New Call to Peacemaking
(NCP), a
more radical caucus within the three peace churches, has gone somewhat
further. In 1978 and again in
1980 the
NCP
called upon members of the historic peace churches “to seriously consider
refusal to pay the military portion of their federal taxes, as a response to
Christ’s call to radical discipleship.” However, attempts to go further and
adopt a position which called “paying for war a sin parallel to the sin of
fighting war” was rejected. As one pastor at the meeting said, “We are calling
my congregation into deep water when they haven’t even gotten their toes wet.”

The mainline Protestant denominations have reacted cautiously or ignored the
issue. There is a growing movement within the Unitarian Universalist
Association to take a position in favor of tax resistance. One of the leaders
of this effort is Rev.
Philip Zwerling of the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles. He says,
“Nowhere is military madness more manifest than in the nuclear arms race… and
on one day of the year — April 15 — we break down and pay for it all… Is it
not moral schizophrenia to blithely pick up the tab for the military mania
that we speak out against? It’s time to put our money where our mouth is.”
However, for all the strength of this statement, the denomination as a whole
has not adopted this position.

At the 1980 General Conference of the United
Methodist Church a resolution was adopted calling for support of those “who
conscientiously object to the payment of taxes for military purposes.” Here,
too, the group stopped short of calling on church agencies themselves to
engage in tax resistance.

Although large numbers of Roman Catholics are engaged in various forms of tax
resistance, the church has taken no official position. According to Father
Bryan Hehir, Associate Secretary for International Justice and Peace of the
U.S. Catholic
Conference, “We have no policy on tax resistance… and I have not adopted a
position intellectually on it.” Activist and author Father Daniel Berrigan
thinks this position is becoming increasingly untenable, “More and more the
question of paying federal taxes is going to become a question of conscience.
The government is stealing money and turning it into blood money. We’re going
to be pushed into a corner on whether we can recognize… our Christianity.”

Addressing the Pacific Northwest Synod of the Lutheran Church in America…
Hunthausen surprised his audience by suggesting what form their action might
take, “I would like to share a vision of an action which could be taken:
simply this — a sizable number of people in the State of Washington, 5,000,
10,000, a half million people refusing to pay 50 percent of their taxes in
nonviolent resistance to nuclear murder and suicide… Form 1040 is the place
where the Pentagon enters all of our lives, and asks our unthinking
cooperation with the idol of nuclear destruction. I think the teaching of
Jesus tells us to render to a nuclear-armed Caesar what that Caesar
deserves — tax resistance.”

Reaction in the community was mixed, but leaders of eight other Christian
denominations in Seattle announced their general support for the stand of the
Archbishop… However, they stopped short of endorsing tax resistance, saying
they would “encourage discussion of tax resistance” and offer support to
“those who refuse to pay taxes in protest of the arms race.”

At the time of his speech the Archbishop openly stated that he himself had not
yet refused to pay taxes, but that it was troubling his conscience. Several
months later he acted. In a pastoral letter published in the Seattle
archdiocesan newspaper, Hunthausen declared, “After much prayer, thought, and
personal struggle, I have decided to withhold 50 percent of my income taxes as
a means of protesting our nation’s continuing involvement in the race for
nuclear arms supremacy… I am saying by my action that in conscience I cannot
support or acquiesce in a nuclear arms buildup which I consider a grave moral
evil.”

…However, Pacific Northwest United Methodist Bishop Melvin Talbert said that
“while the city’s ecumenical leadership is supportive of Hunthausen, none has
indicated that he or she is prepared to follow suit with similar personal acts
of tax resistance.”

Freund ends the chapter with a nod to the World Peace Tax Fund Bill idea,
taking it at face value and noting that “[c]hurch support is broad.”

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